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Wednesday, February 22, 2017

How we hide the TV electronics

Hello there! First of all, I know there is a weird redirect going on with my site and I'm trying to get it figured out. I'm still here! Go ahead and click through if you get the notice and hopefully I'll have it fixed shortly.

You all have been so helpful the past couple of weeks! If you missed my review of our family room sectional earlier this week, check it out here. You all had some great ideas that may be helpful for you those of you with similar issues. I've already tried adding a pillow to our cushions and it made them way too thick, but I'm going to keep working on it.

I have a whole post planned soon about the best way to hang your TV without seeing cables and cords everywhere (safely). But this post goes into more detail on how we hid our electronics in our family room. I didn't want to have the components out if we could help it and this was a perfect solution!

When we took down a wall and extended our family room years ago we had to build our gas fireplace out into the room. Usually there's a little "dog house" bump out outside that your fireplace sits in, but ours had been a corner fireplace. Adding that bump out would have required permits and a lot more time.

Since the fireplace was going to come out into the room anyway, I figured out a solution to reconfigure kitchen cabinets (like I do a lot in our house) and make them into built ins to hide the electronics:

I didn't do that part personally -- the guys we hired expanded them in the back so they would be deep enough to hold the electronics. We used upper cabinets because the lower ones were too deep for what we needed. I had them extend these to 18 inches deep instead of 12 inches like the original cabinet.

I love that the sheeting lets air flow, but also still hides the items inside pretty well. The best part -- the remotes still work!

Here's how it looks inside:

THIS is important and I will go into this more at a later date -- do not run power cords through the wall. I learned years ago this is NOT the correct way to hang a TV. We had an electrician/AV professional install the proper outlets and plugs behind the TV. (Power and receptacles for all HDMI, etc.)

I had the fake wall built above the fireplace so I could recess the TV back into it and have it sit flush with that wall when it's pushed back:

I love that you don't see the wires behind the TV or the mount when the TV is in it's regular position (it also pulls out, swivels and can go up or down). I highly recommend this little trick if you are considering hanging your TV -- especially with a mount that pulls out!

The other cabinet is pure storage which is awesome! Those fabric covered bins are from IKEA and I have all our extra remotes, phone accessories and random electronic stuff inside. I LOVE having this storage in the family room:

5 comments:

You are so inspirational!! Do you know, because of you I bought an electric saw? It's small, but it's my first - I've been afraid of saws forever, which totally holds me back at DIY projects. I have yet to use the one I bought but I love that it's there when I need it!

Running regular power cords in the wall is against code and if anything happened your home owners would not cover it. :( I'm hoping in the next couple of weeks! Until then, make sure you have a professional run the power up to the behind the TV. :)

When we built our house in 2015, your mantle (and your mantle's inspiration pictures) were a huge help in deciding what we wanted to do with ours. We've been in the house for over a year now, and I'm still having a tough time warming that wall up - I noticed that you have a long wooden box with some greens under your TV. Is that the one that was there originally, or did you make/replace it with something else? I know we need some plants to soften all of the hard edges on ours and make it looks cozier, but I just haven't pulled the trigger on any of the ones I've found so far... Thanks!